I just received an email from European Placement Organisation. Has anyone ever heard of them?

They are saying that I am able to teach in Western Europe and do not need a EU passport....all the other recruitment agencies have told me that I do need a European Passport.

There is a fee to use their service. I have heard people on Dave's say that you shouldn't pay recruiters.

I am just waiting for my final document to come back to send off to Korea for an ESL job. When I first started looking for teaching positions I wanted a Western European country but ultimately realized that was not going to happen so changed to look as the Asian market and did accept a job there.

So after all of that, now I get an email stating that yes I can work in Europe without an EU passport.

First of all you need a valid contract in order to apply for a work permit. The duration of this process depends on the country. Once in Europe the process of becoming legal (for non-european-citizen) is relatively simple. To get a residency permit you need to provide proof of work, proof of health insurance, and proof that you have made arrangements for paying into the pension fund. In addition, you have to provide a local address. The best approach is to go to the local registration office as soon as you have a teaching contract. They will tell you what additional steps you need to take and will give you a temporary 6-month visa while you fulfill the requirements.

Sounds like you are essentially on your own. Valid teaching contract is the first (insurmountable in most cases) hurdle. Getting local health insurance and proof that you are paying into the pension fund? Local address means that your landlord must sign a paper saying that he/she is renting a place to someone (currently) without papers. They say it's 'relatively simple,' but you'd want to ask someone who's actually been through the process.

The problem, again, is that you need an employer willing to jump through all the legal hoops to hire you, provide you with the contract, health insurance, and tax id numbers - when they can usually get an EU national without any hassle whatsoever.

Ask them how much it costs:-) And whether they will wait for payment until you are settled into the Western European country of your choice with all the legal documents you need to live and work there legally in your hands.

They have job adverts with some odd starting dates (eg. July/ Dec for Europe?) While these jobs (assuming they exist) are probably not in international schools, what I read recently from the information on international schools included in job mailers sent out by Teachanywhere.com on Europe might be something to consider:

Quote:

Europe, however, is often another story. With the formation of the European Union, most British and International schools located in Western Europe are finding it very difficult to get authorisation to hire teachers from outside the European Union. (A list of EU countries is HERE). This is because the European Union was formed to provide both increased political power and a highly mobile workforce and the feeling is that schools should be able to find sufficient staff within the many member states before going outside of the EU. In our mailers, you will see references to EU Passports needed, meaning that non-EU teachers will not be considered. You will be wasting our time and your own if you apply for these jobs without having an EU passport in hand.

Some schools, such as those using US curricula, have been able to get permission to hire outside the EU but even this requires a long lead time – many months. Usually they will require that you have very specific experience such as at least 1 year of teaching US Advanced Placement (AP) or International Baccalaureate (IB) level to prove to the immigration authorities that your skills cannot be found locally. We do not have many of these clients, however, and when they have last minute vacancies they frequently require teachers who already have EU passports to avoid delays. Non EU countries such as Russia do not have this requirement and are allowed to sponsor teachers, and some of the newer EU countries are more flexible.

Therefore, we find that European placements for non-EU teachers are difficult to find through our agency- impossible in some countries such as Spain, Italy and France - and we recommend that teachers without an EU passport also think about other regions such as the Middle East, Far East, Southeast Asia and Africa where sponsorship is always provided, as well as Eastern Europe.

The best approach is to go to the local registration office as soon as you have a teaching contract. They will tell you what additional steps you need to take and will give you a temporary 6-month visa while you fulfill the requirements.

Hilarious. They obviously haven't been to Italy. Finding anyone who knows what additional steps you need to take will be interesting.

And a temporary six-month visa? The local registration office (i.e. in your comune) can't give out visas...

You could work in Europe yes, but not in Western Europe or the "old EU" (the 15 countries that were EU members pre 2004.) Without specialised quals you have very little chance of getting legal work in places like Spain or Italy. Eastern European countries are often possible for non-EU passport holders to teach in.